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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369933">forget all about equality</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake'>Blake</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>GLOW (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:40:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,609</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22369933</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Ruth/Debbie and Yolanda/Arthie drabbles</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arthie Premkumar/Yolanda Rivas, Debbie Eagan/Ruth Wilder</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. forget all about equality</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ruth has spent years fighting tooth and nail for her own private equality with men (or at least the illusion of it). She has never done anything that she didn’t want to (or that she didn’t talk herself into wanting). She has protected her rights to wear and eat what she wants. Every man who ever tried to degrade or disrespect her sent her running to the hills clutching a nauseous stomach and a throat full of righteous indignation. Her skin prickles when a sketchy guy just <em>looks </em>at her in a way that feels threatening.</p><p>So when she starts sleeping with Debbie, she’s surprised by how much she totally gets off on having her face smashed into the mattress, Debbie’s weight pinning her down. It’s nothing like a wrestling hold, too raw and real, plus there’s Debbie’s fingers pushing into her, fucking relentlessly deep, pushing her so far past what she thought she was capable of feeling.</p><p>It’s not always like that with Debbie, but it was the first time, maybe as they worked out the last of their lingering resentment. But Ruth finds herself asking for it, not with words, but with her body. In the middle of a hot kiss, she’ll get turned on in this certain way and sink deep into the mattress under Debbie, and something about the quality of her movement must get the message across, because Debbie always meets her exactly where she’s at. “You’re gonna take it, aren’t you?” Debbie asks, her tits bouncing in this bizarrely empowered way as she pumps her hips up against the back of her hand where it’s pounding into Ruth too-perfect-deep. “You gonna come for me again?” The harsh tone of her voice feels like being spit on, but Ruth just wants to rub Debbie’s spit all over until she feels pretty and shiny. It’s insane.</p><p>She comes as many times as Debbie wants her to, and then she lets Debbie grind down on whatever body part she wants, smearing her thigh or her ass or her mouth or her fingers until she’s pretty and shiny.</p><p>Maybe someday their relationship could potentially stabilize into something more reciprocal, but for now, Ruth takes it, and takes it, and takes it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. you've got your leather boots on</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ruth still brings out her boots sometimes. Years after the Wall falls, with Randy away all afternoon at a friend’s house, and Debbie reading Amy Tan novels on the grass in the backyard of the house they bought with the paycheck from the last show they took on, Tori Amos on the CD player.</p>
<p>Ruth laces up her old leather boots, hissing at the ghost of pain in her ankle as she does it, and then goes out to straddle Debbie where she lies. A fist in her straightened blond hair, some ridiculous words in her mouth about putting America in its place, laughter in her throat, heat where she rubs against Debbie’s thigh, and the ghost of pain in her ankle where she has it hooked around Debbie’s knee.</p>
<p>Debbie doesn’t fight back, not anymore. She swells, recedes, and laughs. She’s sweet and salty where Ruth kisses her, the bitterness finally wrung out of her system. It took years to earn her trust back, but the glee with which she looks up at Ruth, eyes gleaming with lust and happiness and vulnerability, makes it all worth it, a hundred times over. The meaning of Ruth’s life.</p>
<p>Debbie rolls onto her stomach just to wriggle and rub her inner thighs against the laces of Ruth’s boots where they hold her apart. Ruth lets her knees drop to the grass of Debbie’s hips, lets her whole weight drop down across Debbie’s arching back. She holds tight and looks close at the clutch of her own small hands across the freckled, aging skin of Debbie’s sternum. She closes her eyes and promises herself never to let go.</p>
<p>She’ll scrape her knees raw, and Debbie’s shirt will forever be stained green, and getting Debbie to squirt all over her boots—<em>Now I understand this “trickle-down” economics</em>—is probably less than sanitary, but now that Ruth has this, she will never let go. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. begin the beguine</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The worst part about Vegas is the music. Half the bars in the city have some washed-up piano man playing “Piano Man” and other standards, and the other half of the bars don’t even deserve to be acknowledged.</p>
<p>The song doesn’t come on until Debbie’s halfway through her third martini, since the guy in the business suit keeps on buying them for her. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she yells with vodka-loosened lips.</p>
<p>“What is it?” the guy asks while leaning in and gazing up at her with a huge grin like she’s the moon. “Not strong enough?” He points to the drink, because of course, no one but her is paying attention to the piano man, constantly on edge hoping he doesn’t play <em>this song</em>.</p>
<p>She pastes on a stupid smile and clinks her glass to his as he laughs. “Better buy me another,” she chimes, going along with it. She’s definitely not bringing him back with her tonight, but she’ll take all the drinks he can pay for and then find one of the boys back at the hotel who’s pretty enough to make her feel good about herself without having to actually like herself.</p>
<p>But the song keeps playing. She doesn’t even know the name of the fucking thing, and hardly knows any of the lyrics. It’s supposed to be played by an orchestra. Not by some warbling musician with a week’s growth of beard on his face.</p>
<p>She empties her glass and sucks on an olive, fighting down the swelling in her chest that happens whenever this stupid song comes on. Ruth’s hair in her face, the smell of the shampoo she used to use in college. The glow of the lights and the orchestra at their roommate’s East Coast country club, the hush of the ocean swirling nearby as they danced on the shore, getting sand between their toes and laughing on a dozen glasses of champagne. And this moment, the feeling of Ruth between her hands, against her chest, laughing against her neck, and promising they’ll always be together. The burn in Debbie’s heart when she marveled, for a moment, at the thought that maybe Ruth meant it, that Ruth <em>knew </em>what this was between them. The whole world was theirs no matter what the rich people nearby thought, and Debbie wet her lips for a kiss that might finally come, and Ruth watched her do it, and then Ruth spun away, singing the lyrics to the goddamned song the orchestra was playing.</p>
<p>Debbie gives in to the song with a shiver, mumbling the words along with the ugly piano player and swirling her finger across the empty martini glass in rhythm. She remembers what it felt like when the world could be theirs, if only Ruth could want the same things she wanted. She remembers the pale green dress Ruth wore and how much it hurt when she failed to notice how close Debbie was to kissing her, or else when she <em>pretended </em>not to notice.</p>
<p>Her whole rotten life after that moment has been a mistake, and Ruth doesn’t even fucking know it, because Ruth is too busy <em>living </em>in her mistake like a pig reveling in its own muddy shit.</p>
<p>After her fourth martini, she goes up to the piano and requests the song again, and she dreams of how to get back to that moment.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. every time we say goodbye</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Arthie curls up on the bed, watching Yolanda pack her bags again. It gets worse each time Yolanda decides she can’t do this anymore. The voice in Arthie’s head gets progressively louder, telling her she’s too prudish, too naïve, not gay enough, not good enough to deserve someone like Yolanda, who’s gorgeous and strong like iron that’s been hammered and put through the fire and still managed to maintain the integrity of its own hard-won shape.</p>
<p>She keeps bending over as she packs, moving too quickly in frustration, though she says it’s not Arthie’s fault, not really. Perpetually mesmerized, Arthie watches the flex of Yolanda’s thighs in the too-tight pajama pants she borrowed from Arthie, probably without realizing it. “You could just, come back to bed,” Arthie suggests, because the only way she can think to stop being too prudish, too naïve, not gay enough, and not good enough is to love Yolanda more and more and more, as hard as she can. “I can rub your shoulders,” she adds with a hopeful grin, trying to emphasize that she thinks of Yolanda as more than just a sexual being, but probably just sounding like a prude who doesn’t think about sex enough. Yolanda is a minefield of traps that have been laid by other people and many years that Arthie hasn’t lived. Arthie has committed to withstanding the explosions long enough to memorize the path between the bombs, or maybe even someday deactivating them.</p>
<p>But Yolanda doesn’t even let those explosions touch her. Always the better girlfriend, the one who’s actually able to protect Arthie the way Arthie can’t protect her. She pauses, quiets her own face, and cups her hands to Arthie’s, soothing and cool. “It’s not your fault,” she says again, tantalizingly simplistic, basic enough to seem like the root of all truth. She releases Arthie with that absolution and then leaves the hotel room.</p>
<p>Arthie knows she’ll be back, because it’s something she has to know, so that the voice in her head won’t become her truth. Still, she feels like she’s dying, bleeding out on their stiff sheets again.   </p>
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